


Between the Dream and the Reality

by It_MightBe_Love



Series: Hollow World [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, M/M, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 00:57:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19878964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/It_MightBe_Love/pseuds/It_MightBe_Love
Summary: Tim wakes on a Tuesday in a bed not his own...





	Between the Dream and the Reality

**Author's Note:**

> Loosely edited, actual whump. Happy Birthday Tim.

Tim wakes on a Tuesday with a heavy weight draped across his chest and thinks strange -- he glances at the numbers on his clock, notes that his clock is different and sinks back into a doze. He's warm, and he can't remember the last time he was warm.

He can't remember the last time he fell asleep with someone either. It's this more than anything that jerks him straight out of the doze he was slipping back into. He pushes up and notes absently how he doesn't ache anywhere. He broke his elbow three months ago and it's only just started not acting up anymore. The scar on his elbow now is gone.

He turns, takes in the slope of a broad shoulder, the copper skin. The aquiline nose and strong jaw. 

He swallows.

Damian slants a green eye open and hums tiredly, reaching to palm Tim's hip, "It is too early to be awake beloved. Come back here, the day will be hectic enough with Alfred's preparations for our anniversary, rest while we still can. Our mothers will be in attendance."

Tim lets himself be guided, for want of literally anything to do, and this body relaxes into the touch of Damian's hand, into the heat of his chest. But his mind is a frenetic blur of numbers and what cases he's worked in the past forty-eight hours that would result in this 

\--Because this is not Tim's life. Tim is not married to Damian. Tim's mother is not alive. He does not share a bed with anyone. The last time he and Damian were even in a room together, Damian had managed to dislocate Tim's shoulder, before Tim had subdued him. To say they fight constantly would be an understatement. They are an armistice of carefully coordinated spars, and thinly veiled threats, and unsubtle insults.  
Damian presses the blade of his teeth to Tim's shoulder and a sound punches its way out of Tim's mouth before he can stop it. His tongue sweep across the spot next and Damian's palm curls down Tim's belly, "Think only of me right now,"

It's hard to think of anything else -- Damian seems to know Tim's body. He stifles a sound and lets himself be convinced into distraction for the moment.

This isn't his life, and this isn't his body, and this isn't his bed. But he can take the brief reprieve from his own and figure out how to get back to it, when he doesn't have Damian pressing him into the sheets with hips, and teeth, and too-clever hands.

(There are photos on the walls. This is Tim's brownstone. That at least is the same, the furnishings are all a little different. A mesh of his own style and Damian's likely. Running shoes by the door in a size too large to be anyone's but Damian's, a dog bed by the sofa for Titus. Toys in a crate. 

It's the photos that get him though.

A montage of dates, and holidays, vacations. Their faces mashed close together for obvious selfies. Damian's slant eyed, closed mouth smile. Their wedding. Their first Christmas (their last Hanukkah) .

Damian finds him peering at a triptych of photos from Africa, "That was a good trip. Do you remember," he slid a proprietary hand around Tim's back and leaned over him, "We'd only been dating six months and you disappeared without a word. Father sent me to find you and you were in the savanna taking photos for National Geographic. I'm not sure who was angrier, myself for not knowing. Or Father that you'd only told the clone your whereabouts."

Damian hums and presses a kiss to Tim's temple, "I think Alfred has the edition these were published in, hung somewhere in the manor actually. We should investigate today."

He draws away and Tim feels chilled.

He's never photographed for National Geographic. He hates this alternate version of himself a little. He isn't even in love with his Damian. Attracted to him, sure. Damian grew up the sort of handsome that gets written about in trashy Harlequin novels.

"The car will be here soon, you should find your coat. If we are late Richard is sure to have festooned something in ribbon and glitter and you know how much your mother hates ribbons and glitter."

Tim has gone and stepped into some parallel universe where Damian touches him constantly, and herds him through a home they share together, in a life they've clearly built together, and talks about Janet Drake as if she were an active presence in their lives. Tim wonders what his life here must have been like, having a mother still alive. Janet Drake had not been an especially maternal woman, but Tim had never really doubted his utility to her. Only ever her love of him. had that changed after the Obeah Man had tried to kill his parents? Had Janet Drake returned to Gotham, and like Jack, decided to step up into Tim's life?

He swallows.

The car arrives and he moves as if he's caught in a fugue state. Damian keeps throwing him concerned glances, the entire trip Tim is trying to figure out which was is up and he can't deal with the obvious care Damian is offering him.

Arriving at the manner is the best reprieve and escape, even if stumbling out of the car he comes face to face with his mother. A woman he hasn't seen since he was thirteen. 

The hug she pulls him into has his hands shaking. He'd forgotten the smell of her perfume. How cold her hands always were.

"You're late Timothy--" over his shoulder, "I recall having instructed you to look after him-"

Damian scoffs, "Respectfully, he is my husband, not my dog."

Tim draws away and finds some of the liquid steel that's kept him alive enough to say, "I'm rather more willful, I should think." And it must be the right thing, because Damian laughs, and his mother smiles that Mona Lisa smile that Tim has never quite managed to perfect for himself.)

\--this family is larger than Tim recalls, and Bruce is there, and there are small children running rampant through the halls. Squealing loudly while Bruce watches on, smiling.

Something constricts and shatters in Tim's chest and (he hates it) Damian's hand is a reassuring weight against his palm.

They celebrate on the back lawn, two of the children belong to Dick of all people, and there are Steph and Cass, beneath a Wysteria, sharing cake and trading frosting kisses. That is the same, he thinks. Wide and wild eyed. Breathing is hard. 

Later. Minutes. or maybe hours, Tim lets Damian drag him back into their bed, mouth sticky sweet from cake and champagne. Skin still hot from a day spent outside on a rare cloudless Gotham day, Tim speaks Arabic. He had to learn it by virtue of the year he spent with the League. The poetry Damian murmurs into his skin has tears squeezing themselves free of Tim's eyes. leaves him gasping and clutching Damian's shoulders. His biceps, the nape of his neck.

He falls asleep slotted like adjoining puzzle pieces with Damian.  
He wakes alone in a cold bed with the familiar red numbers of his alarm clock blinking at him. Outside, rain lashes the windows and his elbow aches.


End file.
